Tallhamn said in the blog post that the company failed to draw a lead investor “willing to commit enough capital to fill out the round with follow on investors.” His insights are an indicator of the struggles for the entire energy management sector, including potential competitors that Tallhamn used in a slide from the Cleantech Open including Ecofactor, EnergyHub, AlertMe, and Control4.

The investment community’s perspective on this space had become significantly more critical since we got started, and probably for good reasons. A lot of capital has been destroyed in Series A-Z rounds of funding by our competitors, and most investors made it clear that they’d want to see massive traction before committing capital. They were taking a “wait and see” approach.

The business of helping consumers reduce and manage energy consumption in homes and across appliances and devices is such a small market right now, there can’t be too many players going after basically non-existent revenue. OPower, which provides data analytics and software for utilities for energy bills, is one of the few companies in energy management that I know of that is doing well.

Many of the revenues right now depend on scoring utility deals, which can take months and years to implement. Though, there has also been recent attention from the telcos and consumer electronics companies in the energy management space. But as we’ve mentioned pure play energy management gadgets probably won’t be that interesting to consumers — the gadgets will have to do something else, too, like manage your media or run a home security system. Tallhamn said in his blog post: “On a micro level, the average household’s energy costs are so small ($4k on average across electricity and fuel) that any direct to consumer product aiming to reduce them needs to deliver something beyond just savings.”

Hug was taking a free approach, and looking to mine energy information, with Scoble calling Hug the “Mint of your energy bill.” The company had launched a downloadable energy management application for computers that compiled how many minutes your computer slept and basically called your attention to how much energy you were saving. That app was only a “trojan horse” into a plan to grab a greater piece of the energy management sector, and the company’s idea was to start building a user base before the smart energy devices hit the market, “so that we’d be in a great position for becoming the leading supplier of analytics and control software once they had arrived,” writes Tallhamn.

But alas, you can’t build a product without funding. Tallhamn writes:

Knowing when to push through and when to call it quits is probably one of the hardest things for an entrepreneur, and while I’ll never know for sure, I feel quite confident that this was the right decision for everyone involved.

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For those keeping track at home, that kind of revenue growth is pretty fantastic, but not terribly surprising. After all, YouTube serves more than 2 billion videos a day, including more than 100 million a day on mobile devices. And the site has very aggressively ramped up advertising over the past year, placing more ads against partner videos and those that run on mobile devices.

Pichette didn’t state revenue numbers, but doubling growth is not totally out of line with previous analyst projections. Barclay’s Capital analyst Doug Anmuth estimated that YouTube pulled in $450 million in revenues during 2009. While Anmuth’s forecast last January called for 55 percent growth, others were less conservative. Last March, Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney estimated that YouTube would generate nearly $1 billion in sales for the full year.

While doubling revenue is a plus, it’s important to note that Pichette said nothing about YouTube’s profitability. The question of when the online video site would finally turn a profit has been much debated over the past several years. Despite forecasts early last year that YouTube could become profitable in 2010, it seems that the unit — which Google paid $1.65 billion for back in 2006 — still isn’t in the black.

Coincidentally, the Google call was hosted on YouTube and suffered from some pretty dramatic stuttering and lag, which is surprising in part because it was audio-only.

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Coskata has gotten a letter of intent from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for a $250 million loan guarantee to build a plant to make ethanol from woody biomass. The plant will have the capacity to make 55 million gallons per year. Coskata’s plant plans seriously stalled during the recession, and Coskata has been waiting for this loan guarantee to come through. The company is well-known for touting a $1 per gallon production price and its backers including Khosla Ventures, General Motors, and Advanced Technology Ventures.

The USDA also awarded Enerkem a conditional commitment for an $80 million loan guarantee to build a 10 million-gallon-per-year refinery for making ethanol out of municipal solid waste. Enerkem, which uses a thermochemical trash-to-syngas process, was already awarded a $50 million Department of Energy grant, and also raised funding from trash giant Waste Management, Cycle Capital, Rho Ventures, Braemar Energy Ventures and BDR Capital.

At the same time, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is awarding a $241 million loan guarantee — its first for a biofuel plant — to Diamond Green Diesel. The guarantee will help Valero build a plant in Louisiana that will make 137 million gallons of biofuel per year primarily from animal fats and used cooking oil.

The USDA said it’s not done doling out financial help to biofuel producers. It plans to announce new rules “soon” that will make more money available from the loan guarantee program, which originated from a 2008 Farm Bill.

Lining up money to build refineries has been a huge hurdle for a slew of biofuel companies in the past two years. The recession is only partly to blame. Many of these companies have encountered technical problems for converting plants and wastes into fuel. Investors once flocked to these startup companies, especially when the federal government announced goals to gradually increase the nation’s supply of renewable fuel until it hits 36 billion in 2022.

Well, hitting the goals has proven a lot more difficult. Congress initially set 100 million gallons as the 2010 target for cellulosic biofuel, but the Environmental Protection Agency cut that to 6.5 million gallons. It appears the industry might have produced less than 1 million gallons last year, reported ClimateWire, citing an estimate by a government analyst.

Just last week, reports emerged that Range Fuels, backed by venture capital firms such as Khosla Ventures, was laying off workers and shutting down its refinery in Georgia in order to tackle technical problems and raise more money. Colorado-based Range Fuels received an $80 million loan guarantee from the USDA to help fund its refinery, which began production by making methanol instead of ethanol last year.

Perhaps the USDA will see quicker success from its latest bets. Aside from Coskata and Enerkem, the agency also touted a loan guarantee conditional commitment for a $75 million loan guarantee to INEOS Bio and its partner New Planet Energy, which it first announced a few weeks ago.

INEOS Bio (which is the biofuel arm of petrochemical giant INEOS) and developer New Planet Energy say they will use the loan guarantee to build the “INEOS BioEnergy Center,” near Vero Beach, Florida, that will produce 8 million gallons of advanced biofuels and 6 MW of biomass power from plant waste and trash per year. The companies say the center will begin producing biofuels and bioenergy in 2012, and will create 175 jobs during the construction process and 50 jobs when the center is completed.

Loan guarantees are important awards for companies looking to build plants for these next-gen biofuel projects. A loan guarantee essentially is a promise by the government to back a loan if the company can’t pay it, and it enables companies to finance projects with a better interest rate and at a lower cost.

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The Agua Caliente project will use panels from First Solar, is set for completion in 2014 and is supposed to create 400 construction jobs. Northern California utility PG&E plans to buy the electricity from the project. NRG plans to invest up to $800 million in equity in the project, and the deal between First Solar and NRG requires that First Solar installs, operates and maintains the project.

This is the third big round of DOE loan guarantees for the solar industry. Last summer, the DOE awarded close to $2 billion in loan guarantees to Spanish solar company Abengoa Solar and Colorado-based solar panel maker Abound Solar. Abengoa Solar was awarded a $1.45 billion loan guarantee to help it build Solana, a solar thermal, trough-based, solar farm that is under contract to sell power to Arizona utility APS in Gila Bend, Arizona. BrightSource also received a $1.37 billion loan guarantee to build out BrightSource’s Ivanpah solar project, which is the first new solar thermal power plant being built in California’s deserts in 20 years.

Loan guarantees essentially serve as a promise by the government to make good on a loan if the company can’t, and typically enable better interest rates and lower costs than would otherwise be available to a company for project financing. As DOE Loan Chief Jonathan Silver told us recently, it takes about six months “soup to nuts” to get these applications processed and finalized.

These types of solar projects make sense for the DOE loan guarantee program, because these are the first projects from some of these solar firms in the U.S. The idea is to get a company like BrightSource across the so-called “valley of death,” between proving the technology and building out and scaling up actual plants. Solar projects also offer construction jobs and good press.

Silver told us recently that the “first couple biofuels deals” will be announced “shortly” for the loan guarantee program, and that biofuels will likely be among the next several loan guarantees issued. In the coming year, he said, we’re also likely to see “additional interest” in nuclear and “advanced fossil fuel technologies,” such as “clean coal” and carbon capture.

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Since the screws aren’t readily compatible with any standard screwdriver that a user may have (unlike the Phillips screws they replace), users wanting to crack the case on their own devices and effect repairs at home will be out of luck. On the iPhone and MacBook Air, the new screws will make it harder to get any access to the internals of either device at all, and on the MacBook Pro, they protect the battery, making it even trickier to replace.

The new screw type, called “Pentalobe” because of its five-pointed design, is not proprietary (used and licensed by Apple alone), but it is something you’re unlikely to find just by rummaging through your toolbox or running down to your local hardware store. In fact, iFixit reports that there isn’t even a reputable consumer channel for the exact screwdriver Apple’s own technicians use to handle Pentalobe screws, so users will have to settle for best-fit solutions. You can see iFixit’s video explaining the screws at length below.

Note also that while early iPhone 4 models shipped with standard four-point Phillips screws, if you’ve had your phone serviced recently or are planning to, Apple’s service staff will replace those with the new Pentalobe versions while repairing the device. That swap makes this new screw look like a means to well, screw consumers.

There are two possible explanations for the new screws. First, there’s the line Apple will probably take, if the company comments at all (no response received as of press time): that the screws help prevent against potentially dangerous tampering that would do more harm than good. In other word, the “we’re protecting you against yourselves” argument.

The other explanation is the one that iFixit (which admittedly makes much of its money selling DIY repair kits for Apple devices) is convinced is the real reason: that Apple wants you to buy upgrades and replacements, so it’s making it as hard as possible to repair its products yourself at home. This is definitely in keeping with Apple’s current product design trajectory. The culmination of this new design philosophy seems to be the iPad, which offers no easy internal access, can’t have its storage or RAM upgraded. Apple is approaching the same model in its notebook line with the latest MacBook Air, which now also features the tamper-resistant Pentalobe screws in addition to non-upgradable RAM soldered to the logic board, and a non-standard implementation of flash storage that makes it very hard to replace.

Apple’s newest, more closed designs arguably allow them to make improvements in terms of battery life, system efficiency and physical device size, but they also sacrifice a lot in terms of a user’s ability to customize and repair the devices on their own. The use of these screws, however, doesn’t come with a functional benefit to offset its downsides. Is it a step too far?

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Liquavista displays reduce power consumption much like the Pixel Qi screens currently found in the Notion Ink Adam tablet and Qualcomm’s promising Mirasol display technology. Instead of the standard option of using a backlight to brighten the display, a Liquavista screen has three options: reflective, transmissive and transflective. Indoors, the screen can act just like a traditional LCD display while outdoors, natural light can be reflected through the pixels for clarity and brightness, without a backlight consuming any power. Transmissive is the typical backlit technology LCDs have used for years, while using natural, passive light for reflective displays is a more recent development. Transflective both reflects and transmits light as needed to save power while still displaying a high-quality image.

So Liquavista has both a power-efficient solution and is outdoor-friendly. But how can an e-Ink type of display be used on mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets? The company says its electrowetting technology can refresh a screen up to 60 times per second, opening the door to the high frame rates needed for gaming, video consumption and other media activities on a handheld device. An early prototype Liquavista display was filmed by the BBC last year, and about halfway through the video, you can see a few examples of full-screen, color video playback.

Such frame-rates open the door for Samsung to incorporate Liquavista’s electrowetting technology into handsets, which could help boost battery life. Samsung currently uses its Super AMOLED technology in its Galaxy S line of smartphones, the Nexus S, and its two Windows Phone 7 devices. Super AMOLED is also a power-efficient technology, but can’t leverage the outdoor properties of Liquavista’s screens, so future Samsung handsets could look just as good outside as they do indoors, if not better.

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Lovefilm operates a business very similar to Netflix in Europe, offering subscriptions to a DVD-by-mail service and a streaming video service for a low monthly fee. The company has about 70,000 DVD and Blu-ray titles available by mail and about 7,500 films for streaming, compared to about 100,000 discs and 20,000 streaming titles available on Netflix. Like Netflix, Lovefilm is also expanding the availability of its streaming offering to be viewable on TVs, Blu-ray players, and other connected devices like the PlayStation 3. And last month, Lovefilm rolled out its streaming service to Germany, a new market for its over-the-top offering.

The acquisition shouldn’t come as a complete surprise; after all, Amazon already had a significant stake in Lovefilm prior to today’s announcement, and had reportedly been interested in buying out the remainder for quite some time. Amazon got that stake after Lovefilm acquired Amazon’s DVD rental business in 2008. Amazon also bought out one of Lovefilm’s venture backers to give it a 42-percent stake in the subscription video firm.

Amazon had long been rumored to have an interest in acquiring Netflix, as a way to supplement its online video-on-demand service with a subscription rental offering. But despite years of rumors, Amazon missed an opportunity to buy Netflix on the cheap, since Netflix stock has shot up over the last year, rising more than 250 percent in that time and giving it a market cap of almost $10 billion.

Speaking of Netflix, Amazon’s acquisition of Lovefilm comes not long after Netflix introduced its streaming service in Canada: its first international market. And after what it sees as a successful rollout there, Netflix has been making noise lately about accelerating its international push and entering new markets this year. That could mean that Netflix might soon launch in the UK, facing off against Lovefilm head-to-head.

At the same time, there’s the possibility that Amazon could bring Lovefilm’s offerings stateside. While the firm’s content seems to focus on the European market, Amazon has been looking to compete with Netflix directly, and reportedly had been pitching studios to operate its own subscription streaming business in the U.S. Using Lovefilm’s existing studio relationships and Amazon’s own cloud-based infrastructure, Amazon could possibly accelerate its subscription video plans and introduce a Netflix-like service here.

All that said, the two also have a somewhat symbiotic relationship, as Netflix is a huge Amazon Web Services (AWS) customer. Since announcing that it was moving to the cloud last year, Netflix has increasingly relied on AWS to power the backend infrastructure behind its streaming business, and may be one reason why Amazon recently increased file object size for its Simple Storage Service.

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Silicon Valley startup Law Pivot announced new funding and a new recommendation feature for its Quora-like Q&A service that aims to democratize access to quality legal advice. According to Nitin Gupta, Law Pivot co-founder and VP of business development, the new recommendation feature will add value to the service by helping companies target their queries to lawyers that best match their needs. Even before today’s news, though, Law Pivot has defied the odds by gaining traction in a notoriously technology-resistant profession.

Law Pivot targets technology startups without large legal budgets by letting them pose questions via the web service, which are then answered by Law Pivot’s stable of qualified lawyers. It all sounds great, although Gupta himself — a former lawyer — acknowledges that the legal industry is typically among the last to adopt new technologies. An ongoing shift away from the traditional billable-hours model was accelerated by the economic downturn, however, and now Gupta says “[L]aw firms are realizing that they have to change their ways.”

According to Gupta, Law Pivot has attracted participation from many skilled attorneys, including senior partners at large firms. He attributes the interest to the fact that Law Pivot allows lawyers to expose themselves to new clients more efficiently, as opposed to traditional methods such as attending networking events or doing speaking engagements. Many lawyers have begun to drum up new business by answering questions on Quora and LinkedIn, he says, but Law Pivot gives them the opportunity to do so in a confidential, controlled manner. And when Law Pivot ultimately starts charging for the service, the attorneys will get paid, too.

In this case, what’s good for lawyers is also good for startups. Customers, which include Ooyala and TweetSwirl, can get multiple answers to their questions for a fraction of the price it normally would cost and can establish long-term relationships with an attorney without the legwork normally associated with finding legal counsel.

I asked Gupta about a handful of ethical considerations — including conflict of interest and malpractice liability — that could negatively affect the quality of Law Pivot’s service, but he didn’t seem too concerned. He explained that attorneys understand the rules around concerns, and know that they need to take the appropriate steps to mitigate them, just like they would with in-person client consultations. Another issue that could arise revolves around payment for attorneys, as it’s possible they won’t prioritize Law Pivot questions when more-pressing or higher-paying work awaits with actual clients. For now, though, Gupta says everybody seems happy with the arrangement.

In addition to the recommendation features, Law Pivot announced $200,000 in additional funding, bringing its total to $600,000. The new money comes from Google Ventures and a handful of angel investors.

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UPDATED. Flash-based game site Kongregrate found itself excluded from the Android Market today, but it’s still trying to figure out whether its exile is going to be permanent and if so, why it’s being singled out. The gaming site launched the Kongregate Arcade app earlier today, only to have it yanked after Google reportedly said that it violated the non-compete rules in the Android Market terms of service. Essentially, Google seems to be suggesting that Kongregate Arcade is a competing app store.

According to Jim Greer, the CEO of Kongregate — which was recently bought by GameStop — the Arcade may look like an app store, but it’s actually a web browser that connects to the Kongregate site, Greer told VentureBeat. In this way, the app allows users access to hundreds of free games and allows them to cache those games for offline play.

“It does seem like a pretty extreme distortion to call something that plays content in a browser to be the same thing as an application store,” Greer said. “By this definition, we don’t see why apps like the Kindle or other music apps aren’t across the line.”

Greer told Joystiq that he was confused and shocked, and said the decision to call Kongregate Arcade an app store was a “pretty extreme stretch.” Greer said he previously showed the app to people at Google, who were enthusiastic about having it available in Android Market, though he said they weren’t involved in the decision. He’s holding out hope that Google erred in its exclusion of the app, saying it already allows some game emulators that include hundreds of games.

I’ve reached out to Google for comment and hope to hear back soon. It’s possible that this could all be a misunderstanding — although VentureBeat seems to think that Google may be motivated by a desire to make room for its own gaming efforts. If this decision stands, it does strike a blow to Google’s arguments about how open Android is. That’s been a favorite talking point of Google executives in drawing a distinction between Android and iOS. Apple has taken its lumps on numerous occasions for denying apps for a variety of reasons though it has made efforts to be more transparent lately.

Denying Kongregate wouldn’t do any favors to Android’s reputation as a weak gaming platform compared to the iPhone. The platform is slowly getting bigger titles like Angry Birds, but it’s still not a priority for game developers. And while technically the app store competition argument may apply to Kongregate, it raises the question about what Google will do with other apps like Kindle that offer similar services.

Kongregate is still being promoted through GameStop and being sold through GetJar, which is able to sell games direct to Android users. That is still a nice distinction for Android, which allows third-party app stores to sell apps. But until the Kongregate app rejection is sorted out or the rejection proves to be a mistake, it leaves a lot of questions about the role Google is taking in Android Market.

UPDATE: Google responded with a statement standing by its decision to pull the Kongragate Arcade app. “Applications in violation of our policies are removed from Android Market,” Google said. The reasoning comes down to the fact that the Kongregate app, while it acts much like a browser, has the ability to cache games for offline play. That elevates it into a competing software distribution platform offering outside content, something the Android Market terms of service prohibits. It’s likely that a simpler app that listed Kongregate games and launched a traditional browser could get approved. Or if the games were submitted as individual apps, they would also fly. It seems a distinction is being made here between digital content like books or music and mobile apps, which is why Kindle and other services don’t appear to be in danger of being pulled.

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“We are working hard with our U.S. carrier partners to bring meaningful smartphone solutions to market that are compelling consumer experiences, have strong operator support and a thriving ecosystem. As in any business, plans can change and deliberate decisions must be made to enable clear focus on bringing the right products to market at the right time.”

From the sounds of the statement, and given that Nokia hasn’t gained traction here in the U.S. with its Symbian devices, it appears to me that Nokia and AT&T couldn’t agree on the financial details of a carrier deal. Conversations may have ended a February launch, but Nokia appears open to revisiting a deal with AT&T — or perhaps the other big GSM operator, T-Mobile — to get its current high-end smartphones in front of consumers at a price competitive to iPhones and Android handsets.

The situation, if true, also tells me that AT&T is confident enough with its current and planned phone portfolio. Yes, the carrier is losing iPhone exclusivity in a few short weeks, but AT&T has solid Android offerings including the new Motorola Atrix 4G, which can fit in a laptop-like dock or pump 1080p video to a high-definition television set.

I actually had high hopes that Nokia would be able to work with AT&T to carry one of the new Symbian devices announced at Nokia World in September. A developer contest held by Nokia tipped off the possibility of a new Nokia device on AT&T, mainly because AT&T was a key sponsor. Now it looks like that plan has either fallen through or been postponed, at best. And that hurts Nokia because its Symbian devices aren’t subsidized, nor do they receive any marketing attention here in the States. This means most consumers don’t know about them, and when they do find out that Nokia has something to offer, they’re put off by prices of $500 or more.

Based on my prior conversations with key Nokia executives, I suspect this is just another set-back, and not a completely closed door. The U.S. market is extremely important to Nokia, I was told back in June by Niklas Savander, EVP and general manager of the markets unit at Nokia. If AT&T won’t play nice with Nokia, then perhaps the largest handset maker in the world in terms of sales can get T-Mobile to offer subsidized Symbian smartphones.

I think the devices have excellent hardware designs, but are lacking in usability. If Nokia can get a carrier to work with them, it will be up to U.S. consumers to pass their own judgment in a world of iPhones and Androids.

Image courtesy of Eldar Murtazin

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There was good reason to expect a lower valuation from the Englewood, Colo.-based startup, Lux research analyst Samhitha Udupa told us in August. The company generated $660,000 and lost $19.89 million in 2009, and had accumulated a deficit of $50.3 million as of March 31, 2010. Still, Lux has put Gevo among its top-ranked biofuel startups for the past two years, giving it high marks for its innovative retrofit model toward cheaper production costs.

Gevo, which has backing from Khosla Ventures and Virgin Green Fund, wants to retrofit old corn ethanol plants to turn cellulosic feedstocks like agriculture waste into isobutanol, a fuel additive and precursor to plastics and other products. The startup is retrofitting an ethanol plant in Luverne, Minn. to produce about 18 million gallons of isobutanol per year, and says its retrofit model could allow it to scale up to 50 million gallons-per-year for about $24 million, or 100 million gallons for $40 million to $45 million.

Empty ethanol plants aren’t necessarily hard to come by — oil refining giant Valero bought up seven plants from bankrupt corn-to-ethanol maker VeraSun in 2009. If Gevo meets its new IPO targets, it could command a market value of $349 million, according to Renaissance Capital. The company booked $2 million in sales for the fiscal year ending in September 2010 and has said it has letters of intent from customers including chemical company Lanxess, French oil giant Total’s subsidiary Total Petrochemicals USA, plastic maker Toray Industries, airline company United Air Lines and oil industry technology developer CDtech.

One big question is whether Gevo will tackle the biofuel market right away, or focus on providing isobutanol for the plastics and chemicals industries. The company got EPA clearance to sell its isobutanol as a fuel additive in November, but it is also looking to supply makers of plastics, fibers, rubber and other polymers.

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The dedicated servers aren’t the most noteworthy about the GoGrid Hosted Private Cloud — the company already offers those as part of its hybrid cloud offering — the retention of the core IaaS features is. That means on-demand provisioning, pay-per-use billing, the same APIs and management portal, load balancing and the complete lineup of partner products in the GoGrid Exchange. Additionally, customers can choose from multiple data centers — GoGrid, Verizon and Digital Realty Trust in San Francisco, and Equinix in Washington, D.C. Ashburn, Va.– in which to host their private-cloud servers. According to GoGrid CEO John Keagy, infrastructure is already in place in the GoGrid and Verizon data centers, whereas customers choosing Digital Realty Trust or Equinix will have to rent their own private cages.

If you’re wondering how dedicated resources can scale on demand, here’s how Hosted Private Cloud works. Customers have their own pools of physical servers on which they can scale up and down VMs as need be. Keagy says that adding VMs is a truly a real-time experience, while adding new physical servers, which GoGrid calls “nodes,” is near real-time. This is because Hosted Private Cloud nodes are the same “super-large Intel boxes” atop which the GoGrid public cloud is built, meaning they’re already in place and ready to go when needed. Each node can house up to 250 VMs.

Cloud computing purists might deride efforts like Hosted Private Cloud as “fake clouds,” but that won’t likely make any difference on sales, and certainly doesn’t make it any worse an idea.  For cloud providers like GoGrid, which have their roots in managed hosting, it’s smart to make use of that expertise for differentiation instead of always trying to compete with AWS.Further, Keagy told me that GoGrid is doing a lot of business with service providers, including Orange, looking to resell GoGrid resources under their own banners, and Hosted Private Cloud is the result of their desires.

Keagy understands why AWS focuses on developers with efforts like Elastic Beanstalk, but says that GoGrid is focusing on “where the available market is” now. “We think the bulk of the 3 trillion IT economy is for production challenges, where you can’t just Greenfield new applications,” Keagy explained. “We’re not targeting developers so much as we’re targeting systems administrators.” However, he added that cloud watchers “don’t want to count us out” on the PaaS front, as GoGrid is working on its own flavor of platform services that will be tailored to its customer base.

CIOs appear interested in private clouds, so GoGrid’s challenge will be getting them to buy into its approach instead of building their own in-house clouds. It might come down to a matter of weighing cost savings against the peace of mind of knowing exactly what’s going on with their infrastructure and who’s tending to it. Also, GoGrid will have to compete against a number of competitors selling their own flavors of dedicated, physical cloud resources, including StrataScale. Peer1 Hosting and VMware vCloud Datacenter partners. It wouldn’t be surprising to see Rackspace get into this market too, as a complement to its dedicated-shared hybrid cloud offering.

Image courtesy of Flickr user midom.

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The addition of a standards-based platform for building web apps will be a welcome change for publishers in an increasingly fragmented TV app market. According to GigaOM Pro analyst Michael Wolf, there are at least 10 different TV app platforms to build for today, all of which are vying for developer attention.

But the diversity of TV app platforms, while giving publishers choice, also means those video creators who wish to have their content everywhere end up spending significant resources on building and re-building their user experience for multiple devices. The best example of this is probably Netflix, which is now available on more than 250 different connected devices.

However, even Netflix CEO Reed Hastings admits the company is paying an innovator’s tax by trying to be in all places at once; because it’s intent on leading the space, the company is investing significantly in making sure all of its TV apps work, sometimes on platforms that aren’t fully ready. Other publishers who come later should have significantly fewer headaches in building out their own apps, as the platforms reach maturity.

Moving to a standards-based approach for building TV apps will also make life easier for publishers. Already, some publishers — like music streaming service MOG — have said they will only build for platforms that support HTML5. The BBC Trust recently ruled that it will only build standard versions of its iPlayer video catchup service. Even Netflix is pushing for a more standards-based approach to delivering video to different devices.

Some consumer electronics companies are stepping up to the plate by offering standards-based browser capabilities. Google TV and Boxee both have HTML5-compatible browsers for displaying web content, although so far most publishers are more interested in taking an app-based approach.

Putting Opera’s browser on connected TVs might be one way to help publishers build HTML5-based experiences. Opera has a content development kit available for publishers that want to build standards-based web apps displayed through its browser, although it’s not clear if this functionality will be available on the new Sony TVs.

Even so, a browser-based approach, rather than one built on apps, might be one way publishers can reach multiple devices. In the same way publishers build HTML5-optimized pages for the iPad, they could also reuse those assets for connected devices that sport Opera and other standards-based browsers. That would allow them to build once and have their content formatted appropriately across multiple devices, without having to worry about rebuilding those experience for other app platforms.

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Using a Verizon handset for voice and web surfing at the same time hasn’t been possible in the past, because Verizon uses one network for both voice and data. So current CDMA handsets on Verizon must pause their cellular data connection in order to use the network for voice. If the leaked training slide is accurate, Verizon and HTC have come up with a solution for that limitation. While it could be some type of VoIP offering over LTE such as VoLTE (Voice over LTE), I suspect it isn’t, for a few reasons.

The GSMA, the governing body of GSM telecommunications systems, launched a VoLTE initiative only last year. The intent is to create a set of standards for voice communication over LTE networks, which unlike current 3G networks, are completely IP-based. It’s going to take time for those standards to evolve, and I simply don’t see Verizon trying to set the standard for the rest of the world, especially since the operator is just now beginning to adopt GSM technologies.

Adding to that challenge is the lack of LTE network coverage; Verizon’s next-generation network currently covers 38 markets and about one-third of the U.S. population. The carrier expects to cover 140 additional markets by the end of 2011. How would a VoLTE-capable phone handle a voice call when leaving a 4G coverage area? The digital call would have to seamlessly route over to the analog network and that’s simply too complicated. As it is today, available LTE data sticks take time to switch back and forth from 4G to 3G, for example, and any delay would create a poor voice experience.

More likely to me is the idea of managing voice and data through completely separate radios within a handset such as the ThunderBolt. In an LTE coverage area, the data connection would be handled on the faster 4G network and voice would simply be handled as it is today: on the CDMA network. Through software management and multiple radios, this solution seems most likely to me in the short term to provide simultaneous voice and data on Verizon’s network. It’s worth noting that among the new LTE handsets, only the ThunderBolt is using Qualcomm’s new silicon, combining a Snapdragon system-on-a-chip with a Gobi-enabled LTE modem.

We should know soon if indeed the ThunderBolt will handle voice and data at the same time because my sources say that among the four new LTE handsets Verizon will launch in the first half of 2011, the ThunderBolt is the most likely one to launch first. That makes sens,e because aside from Motorola, no other smartphone vendor has partnered as much with Verizon than HTC in the past year or two. The other two LTE handsets expected by June are coming from LG and Samsung, which don’t have as much of a smartphone history with Verizon.

It’s possible that some early standard of VoLTE will appear on the ThunderBolt, but my money is on a multiple radio solution that totally separates voice and data to handle simultaneous use. And if I’m correct, that means you’ll only be able to talk and surf on such devices where you have both 3G and LTE coverage. Consider it a stop-gap measure until a true VoLTE standard evolves, which gives Verizon more time to build out its LTE network.

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Hefner revealed the news about the iPad on his Twitter account, where he tweeted the following:

Big news! Playboy–both old & new–will be available on iPad beginning in March.—
Hugh Hefner (@hughhefner) January 19, 2011

In later tweets, he assured multiple followers that the magazine would be uncensored, and that back issues as well as current editions spanning the magazine’s entire run would be available for download. Hefner didn’t announce pricing or whether subscription plans were in the works. Many expect that Apple will introduce a digital subscription mechanic for iOS publications to coincide with the arrival of Rupert Murdoch’s dedicated iPad newspaper The Daily, however. The Daily was supposed to launch this Wednesday, but has been reportedly been delayed a few weeks.

If Playboy does indeed arrive on the iPad with full nudity intact, it’ll mark a significant change in App Store policy. Apple has seemed intent on keeping even relatively innocuous depictions of nudity or brazen sexuality out of its app marketplace. Last June, it censored illustrated nude images in comics based on James Joyce’s Ulysses and Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest. Sure, you could probably debate whether or not the nudity in those cases has a solid artistic motivation, but it’d be very difficult to have the same kind of discussion about Playboy.

The App Store isn’t completely without nudity, however. UK-based tabloid, The Sun, managed to somehow get its “Page 3 Girl,” who is depicted topless, through Apple’s vetting process in its iPad application. And this wasn’t just an oversight that Apple eventually corrected. In November 2010, The Sun introduced Page 360, a feature that lets you rotate the Page 3 girl, providing a 360-degree view of the model.

Perhaps Apple is moving forward with the Playboy venture after realizing that having nudity in the App Store through The Sun hasn’t been met with global public outrage or a boycott of the platform. The fact is, Apple has built a very robust parental control system during the past few major upgrades, and, as many have been quick to point out, the iPhone’s browser easily provides all the adult content anyone could ever dream of having access to.

Playboy is a good place to start if Apple is indeed planning to test the waters further with sexually suggestive material. Its depictions of nudity are fairly innocuous in terms of the spectrum of adult material, and it also offers some solid editorial content. If the public reacts poorly, it can easily pull the plug, but I think the platform is ready for this step, especially if Apple is serious about becoming a major magazine purveyor on the international market, where nudity in print is not at all uncommon.

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The system, which Starbucks claims is the largest mobile payment program in the country, works through a Starbucks Card Mobile App, available for iPhone and BlackBerry handsets. The app, which is loaded up with a user’s funds via PayPal or a credit card, displays a barcode which the register processes. After a user waves their phone at a Starbucks register for payment, the funds are subtracted from their Starbucks account.

According to the Seattle Times, the mobile payments system builds off Starbucks’ success with reloadable store cards and its push to attract mobile device users. The company said one in five transactions occurs through Starbucks Cards. Users added more than $1.5 billion on the cards last year, a 21 percent increase over 2009.

Starbucks said a third of its U.S. customers use smartphones, mostly iPhones and Blackberry devices. The chain has pushed hard to attract mobile users by making Wi-Fi free and launching a Starbucks Digital Network in stores for customers. By offering connectivity, the company can see which devices are using Wi-Fi, and therefore, which are most popular in its stores, making it easy to target specific platforms with apps. An Android version of the app is reportedly in the works.

Starbucks users can manage their Starbucks Card account from their phone and add funds from existing cards by entering the card numbers into their account. Or they can tie a credit card to their account and request automatic reloads when their balance falls to a certain point. Users can protect their account data with a passcode on the mobile app and can also receive balance protection through their Starbucks Card account if they lose their phone.

The battle for mobile payments has been heating up recently with major players looking at near field communications as a way to process payments. Google has enabled NFC in its latest version of Android while AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA last year formed Isis, a mobile commerce network that uses NFC. The big hurdle for NFC is that merchants must be convinced to install readers at a couple hundred dollars a pop and use some form of payment standards. But without mass adoption of NFC chips in phones, merchants aren’t in a rush to make the investment.

Starbucks’ system doesn’t work off NFC, but is more of a digital card tied to the phone, a system that works with its existing infrastructure. It has the potential to further lessen people’s reliance on making purchases with cash and credit cards and could help teach people about the benefits of paying with their phone.  If Starbucks was really ambitious, it could look at letting other companies piggyback off its system for a fee, at least until NFC becomes more of an option. Either way, Starbucks is helping forward the debate on mobile payments. We’ll now get to see what the demand is for paying for a latte by phone.

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